


Five Times Sburb Almost Broke Sakura Kyouko (And One Time She Helped Break It)

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Homestuck, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-26 07:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/648064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Lappy.  In an alternate universe, the Madoka Magica girls play a game every bit as diabolical as the puella magi system.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Future

            You are Sakura Kyouko, and you've just woken up from a bad dream.

            You don't immediately recognize the bed you're in, but a morning that starts in a bed of any kind is a pretty good morning for you.  As you rub the sleep from your eyes and look around, you gradually recall that, right, Mami told you you'd need a computer and a building of some kind for today, so last evening you nicked a laptop and broke into a vacant hotel room.  You don't normally live this extravagantly, and honestly you feel a bit bad about it, but Mami said it was important, and you've found that she's usually worth listening to.

            This place is none too shabby.  It's clean and airy, the wallpaper looks fairly new, and there are even some prints of brightly colored paintings in thick, expensive-looking frames.  They're all of a girl in a white dress drowning in some river, with a bunch of flowers scattered everywhere.  Kind of creepy, if someone were to ask you, but then you don't really "get" art.

            The laptop is less impressive, but it'll do.  Time to boot it up and get this show on the road.

damnedifIcare [DI] began pestering teacupEnthusiast [TE]

DI: all right what now

TE: Oh my.

TE: Sakura-san, is that really what you wrote down when asked what you wanted your username to be?

DI: yeah got a problem with it

TE: No, no, not at all!

TE: I think it suits you, Sakura-san.

DI: whats that supposed to mean

DI: wait dont answer that

DI: the real question is why we cant just meet up in person for whatevers going down today

TE: We'll be meeting soon enough, I think.

TE: By that time, it should be clear why all this was necessary.

TE: I suppose I ought to tell you before we go much further that when I say "necessary," I mean it. The stakes for the mission we are about to undertake are much higher than you might think.

TE: If I understand things right, the whole world will soon be in danger, and we may be the only ones in a position to save it.

DI: youre joking right

DI: its hard to tell when I can't see your face

TE: Do you really think I would have told you to get your own computer if it weren't important?

TE: I know you have limited methods for acquiring expensive things.

DI: damn i guess i believe you but thats going to take a while to sink in

TE: That's fine.

TE: I'm about to send you two programs. Download both of them, and then contact Miki-san. She'll know what to do from there.

TE: Akemi-san is still busy with Kaname-san as her client, so you might as well get started setting up before helping her.

TE: Before that though, I would like to say that I was excited to see you in my dream last night.

DI: huh

TE: You're awake now, Sakura-san. Please try to remember last night. I don't think you saw me, but you must have sensed that it was not an ordinary dream.

DI: i guess i did but all i really remember are the weird clouds with movies in them

TE: I'm glad. Those are the most important part.

TE: You've noticed by now that I sometimes know things I should not. My secret is in the clouds of Skaia.

DI: are you saying that what happens in those clouds is going to happen in real life

TE: That's correct.

DI: but they're not always right about everything right

TE: They are never wrong. The only difficult part is piecing together the brief glimpses they offer into something large enough to be useful.

            That was really not the answer you wanted.

DI: just send me the downloads already

damnedifIcare [DI] ceased pestering teacupEnthusiast [TE]

            _Stay cool, Kyouko,_ you tell yourself.   So the whole world's going to be in danger soon.  That probably happens way more often than you're even aware of.  Mami is very responsible; if it weren't something a group of middle school girls could handle, she would have gotten adults to help.  And if a group of middle school girls can handle it, then high stakes or not, it can't be _all_ that big of a deal.

            What _is_ kind of a big deal is that apparently what you dreamed last night will come true, and last night you dreamed you saw Sayaka stabbing you through the heart with a big damn sword.

            But you know how this works.  There are two kinds of stories about seeing the future, the good kind and the bad kind, and the difference is in how you react to the knowledge.  If you worry about it too much, it will consume you.  You'll get increasingly desperate trying to keep it from happening, and eventually your own reckless actions will be its cause.  But then there's the other stories, the ones about heroes who accept their fate and do the right thing even though it's hopeless, and in the end they realize they misinterpreted the prophecy and everything will be all right after all.  You always liked those better.

            (Although...  if you're only "accepting" your fate because you think doing that will protect you, isn't that cheating?  Is it even possible for someone like you to act with a pure heart?  And shouldn't you know better by now than to trust in happy stories?)

            Mami pesters you again because you are an idiot who didn't realize you had to be in an active chat for her to send the files to you.  You pretend you aren't flustered at all, and then pretend even harder when you start pestering Sayaka.  She helps you connect as the client to her server, whatever that means, and then shows you how to start a video chat.

            "Tada!" she says, throwing her arms up with a flourish as she appears on your monitor.  "That's much better.  When it's just text on a screen, I don't really feel like I'm talking to Kyouko."

            "I thought you said you could see me with the game."

            "I can!  But it's weird when you're just sitting there silently and looking the other way.  Then again," she continues with a mischievous and, you think, perhaps even slightly _lascivious_ grin, "it might be more fun if I could see you but you couldn't see me."

            You can feel your face turning as red as your hair.  "Don't say things like that!"  _Unless you mean them_ , you want to add, but unfortunately you're nowhere near smooth enough to pull that off.

            "Oh, never mind!"  Sayaka giggles wickedly, and something soft but bulky whacks you in the back of the head with a _whumpf_.  Turning around, you see that it's a pillow.  "I thought of a better way to abuse my newfound power."

            "I'll get you back for that when we meet up later," you promise, only just barely keeping yourself from giggling as well.  How could someone who refers to one-sided incorporeal pillow fights as an "abuse of power" ever seriously hurt you?  Sayaka is beautiful and ridiculous, and looking at her smiling face now, you can no longer even clearly picture the grim swordswoman you saw in the clouds around that weird blue star.

            "We'll see about that," Sayaka says, and drops a hotel towel over your head.


	2. The Past

Sometimes even you aren't sure why you kept that lock of her hair.  It's kind of pointless when the stuff on your own head looks exactly the same.  Father would have called it profane.  He would have told you Momo's human body was in direct opposition to her inner divine nature, so it's foolish to mourn for it, let alone try to hold onto it.  Ideas like that were what lost him his connections and caused your family to start starving; what made him so resigned to keep starving; and, finally, when his brain was getting a bit addled from all that starving, what led him to decide that murder and suicide might not be as sinful as everyone said they were.  Maybe somewhere deep down, part of it was one last "screw you" to the old man.

            And maybe the apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all, because the first words that pop into your head to describe what you're seeing right now were some of his favorites.  "Profane" is definitely among them.  Momo's whole body, if it can really be called that, is a bright, glowing crimson, and tapers off into a wispy tail below the waist.  A fumbled taiyaki has marked her with scales and fish fins.  You absolutely do not allow yourself to wonder whether there's azuki paste on the inside.

            Then she cries out "Big Sis!" and zooms over to grab your hands and bounce excitedly up and down, and all you can think is to Hell with what she looks like, it's her, it's really _her_.  There are tears welling up in your eyes, which is kind of a problem because there's no way you're getting your hands free fast enough to wipe them away before she notices.

            She notices something else first, though.  Her face falls, and she shouts, "Big Sis, look out!" before shoving you to the side.  You stumble, and turn around just in time to see a dwarf-like monster with clawed hands take a swipe at her face.  The world slows down and seems to get clearer and brighter as without even thinking you deploy your spear from your strife specibus and pierce the monster through the head.  It bursts into a confusing jumble of shapes and colors and vanishes.

            There's a crash as a small horde of the creatures bust down the door to your hotel room.  Some of them have cat ears and whiskers, or fish fins and scales, or floral patterns like the ones on Mami's tea sets on their skin.  You charge into the crowd, skewering three of them with one thrust of your spear and spinning around to catch two more of them right in the teeth with the shaft.  Unfortunately, the blunt force doesn't take them out, and before you can get your bearings, they've positioned themselves on either side of you and are lunging at you claws-first.  You bring your spear up to catch one of them on the point and just hope that whatever the other one does to you doesn't hurt too much. 

            A beam of glowing crimson apples streams past you.  It leaves behind the smell of heat and ozone and, you surmise from the lack of pain, probably very little of the monster that was about to maul you.  You turn to Momo and see her holding out her arms like a chi-fighter in a boys' anime.  "Are you okay?" she asks you.

            "That's my line, dummy!"

            "Who are you calling a dummy?"  Momo puffs out her cheeks.  It's a familiar gesture from her, but the way it makes the scales on her face splay out a little is new and not exactly welcome.  "It takes more than that to hurt a sprite.  But Big Sis is still just a squishy human."

            "I may be squishy, but I know how to use a spear.  So don't go taking any risks to protect me, got it?"  Just the thought of outliving her a second time twists your guts up in painful knots.

            "All right, Momo won't!  I think I'm supposed to help you, but I'm also supposed to give you space to do stuff on your own so that you can learn how to be the Thief of Mind."

            "Thief of Mind?  What's that mean?"

            "Oh, you didn't know?  Surprise!  Big Sis is a famous hero!"

            "No, I kind of figured that much.  It matches up with the prophecy stuff the others have been hearing.  Witch of Time and Maid of Space and all of that.  But what's a Thief of Mind supposed to do?"

            "Hm?"  Momo looks thoughtful.  " I wonder..."  She considers it for a moment before giving up with a small whine of frustration.  "It's really confusing!  Mind is thoughts and choices and will, so I guess you steal those somehow?"

            You don't like the sound of that at all.  "You mean I make people go insane?"

            "Maybe!  There's probably other ways of looking at it, though."

            You think of Father in those last days:  moving erratically, speaking near-gibberish, all with that strange far-away look in his eyes.  You're going to have to find out more, because if there's any chance of your powers doing that to someone, you aren't using them.

            You pace around a little in agitation and end up getting a clear view out the frame of the busted up door.  There should be a hallway there.  Instead, there's a rocky wasteland.  Steeple-like stone structures of varying heights rise up out of the ground, each one topped with a sea foam green crystal orb.  Tendrils of electricity arc from orb to orb, creating a three-dimensional spider web of lightning.  You're so overwhelmed by the fantastic, alien landscape that it takes you a moment to notice the skeletal beams of the hotel building framing your view of it.

            "What the..?  Was the rest of it left behind?" you blurt out, and then follow that train of thought to its logical conclusion.  "Oh man, that's not good!  If the ceiling doesn't have those there to support it, it might fall in on the people in the other rooms."

            "Mm?  Does that matter?" Momo asks dismissively.  "They'll all be dead soon anyway."

            Your blood freezes.  For just a moment, you stand perfectly still, too afraid to turn around.  You're sure that when you do, Momo won't be there anymore.  The sprite will have morphed into something unrecognizable, a hideous crimson monster with your dead sister's voice.  Steeling your courage, you get a strong grip on your spear and whirl around to face it.

            She doesn't look any different than she did a minute ago.  Those scales, though?  They're starting to make your skin crawl.  "What do you mean, they'll all be dead?"

            "Because the world's ending.  _Dummy_."  She sticks her tongue out at you and knocks herself softly on the head.

            "I know that, but we're going to save it, right?  That's what Mami-san said."

            "I guess Mami-san was a little confused, then!" Momo goes on cheerfully.  "It _can't_ be saved.  But don't worry, what you're doing here is still really important — _way_ more important than just one planet!"

            "Momo," you say through gritted teeth, "tell me:  what's it like on the other side?"

            "The other side of what?"

            "You know."  Your hands tense around the shaft of your spear.  "The veil."

            "Huh?  You mean on Derse, or the Furthest—?"  She stops.  "Oh.  You mean the 'veil' like Father talked about."  You nod, and she appears to think it over.  "I guess there wasn't really anything like that.  On the one hand, it does seem like a long time ago since I died.  But that's also the last thing I remember before turning up like this."  She illustrates the "this" by spinning around like she's showing off a dress.  Somehow, it doesn't have quite the intended effect.  "It's like waking up from being asleep, I guess."

            You level your spear at her.  "Get out of my sight now."

            "What?"  She looks shocked, and it's almost too awful, but you hold onto your resolve.

            "You look too much like my sister.  Get out."

            "I _am_ your sister, dummy!"

            "That's not possible.  Momo is in Heaven.  If everyone on Earth were going to die, Momo would _care_."  You feel hot tears welling up in your eyes, but you blink them back.  "Maybe there's a part of her in you, but it's not enough.  It just makes the whole thing worse."

            "I...  I _am_ Momo!"  Suddenly, she breaks down sobbing.  "I'm different now, but Momo is still Momo, so please don't talk to me like that!  I don't know why I don't care!  When I think about it, it does sound bad, but somehow I just _know_ that it's not that important!  It really, really isn't, I promise!  It all makes sense in my head, but I can't make it come out right!  Don't hate me, Big Sis, please!"

            Before you can even think about what you're doing, the spear clatters to the floor and you're standing over her, wrapping your arms around her and gently pressing her head into the crook of your neck.  "I could never hate you," you assure her.  "I'm sorry.  Everything is just so weird.  But no matter what, I'm going to save the world, and then I'm going to save you."

            "Save me from what?" she asks.

            "There's something messing with your head," you tell her.  "I don't know what it is, but I'm going to find out, and I'm going to stop it."

            "You can't—" she begins, but you cut her off.

            "Shh!  Don't tell me what I can't do!  Please, Momo, for once, just be quiet. "

            Momo nods into the hollow of your throat, and her tears fizz like soda water on your skin.


	3. A Time That Never Was

            Everything has gone horribly wrong.

            It's been weeks now.  You're not sure how many.  Sayaka keeps track, but you don't really see the point; you're going to spend the rest of your life here, and, in all likelihood, "the rest of your life" won't be very long.

            Akemi's holed herself up in the Land of Red Sand and Glass and won't say much about what she's doing there even when you go out of your way to hunt her down.  Sayaka has thrown herself head-first into the whole Knight of Void thing, insisting on going up against enemies way beyond her pay grade all to protect those weird little pink turtles in the Land of Sound and Sea and even weirder chess piece aliens on Prospit — because trying to be heroes worked out _so_ well for Mami and Madoka, right?

            And you?  Well, to sum up:  your home planet is definitely destroyed by now; two of your friends are dead; the other two are slowly going nuts, and one of them may very well murder you soon; Momo has been avoiding you for so long that you can't even be entirely sure she's still alive, or undead, or whatever; and this "game" is now completely unwinnable and also — funny story! — turns out to have been the thing chucking meteors at the Earth in the first place, so you were a total chump for ever believing that by playing it you could save anyone.  On the other hand, you've gotten your hands on these magical machines that can make an unlimited supply of pretty much anything you want as long as you keep killing underlings and collecting grist.  So that's pretty cool, you guess.

            On that note, you're fairly pleased with yourself right now.  The endless pocky and taiyaki was fun and all, but it was getting old, so you messed around with the alchemiter a little and came up with a spread of fancy cakes and parfaits.  It's real high class stuff, the sort of thing Sayaka might appreciate.  Maybe if you send her some pictures, you can convince her to stop trying to kill herself for long enough to come help you eat it all.  And what the Hell, while you're at it, maybe you could dress up like a café maid too.  You miss her being all flirty and goofy all the time.  At the very least, it would probably make her smile.  Besides, you can't quite remember what you were wearing in the dream vision, but you're pretty sure it wasn't _that._

            As you're trying to work out how to alchemize one, Akemi starts pestering you.  You're tempted to just ignore her — that's what she's been doing to you this whole time, and fair's fair after all — but if she's coming out of her shell, it must be about something pretty important.

anarchistCook [AC] began pestering damnedifIcare [DI]

AC: Sakura-san?

AC: Please pick up Sakura-san!

AC: Please! 

DI: okay im here. 

DI: ive been meaning to ask whats up with that username i didnt know you were either of those things

AC: Um. 

AC: It's a terrible joke. I'm sorry. 

DI: urgh could you try not being a complete doormat for two seconds it really pisses me off 

AC: I'm sorry! 

DI: forget it 

DI: what did you need to tell me

AC: Right! Sorry! It's Miki-san. 

AC: Just now I tried to contact her to ask about something, and she was acting really strange and saying odd things. 

AC: I think she's on her way to Derse right now. 

AC: Please stop her, Sakura-san! She'll get herself killed for sure! 

AC: Sakura-san? 

           You don't even bother to close out of the chat.  The moment you've processed what's going on, you're on your feet and sprinting up the stairs to the gate to Sayaka's land.

            The Land of Sound and Sea is a web of small white islands on midnight blue water, connected by bridges of floating piano key planks.  It's flat enough that, from the balcony you land on when you drop through the gate, you can see clear to the horizon.  After maybe a minute of scanning the ground far below you, you find where Sayaka is.  She's definitely on the move, striding at a brisk, purposeful pace across the chalky sands.  You try calling out to her, but, just as you thought, she's too far away to hear you.

            _You could just let her go_ , _you know_ , whispers a vicious little voice in your head.  If she gets herself killed now, she can't kill you later.  If the vision is something that can be avoided, here's the way to avoid it.  If it isn't, she'll be fine no matter what, so there's no point wasting your breath trying to chase her down.

            Of course, that's Sayaka it's talking about, so you don't listen to it for a second.

            You race down through her house and out onto the islands.  You're moving faster than she is, so you _should_ be able to catch up, but the problem is the bridges.  They're always shifting around; the piano keys disappear as you step on them and pop up again in some other part of the land.  Anything Sayaka has already crossed is gone, so the best you can do is take a route parallel to hers.

            Finally, you spot her.  You pick up your speed to reach the island just alongside the one she's on, and call out to her again, across the chasm of dark water.  She stops and turns to look at you — but only for a moment.  Before you can get so much as a word in, she's taken off running.

            Cursing her with what little breath you can spare, you keep pace with her.  You could cross over behind her to the side she's on, but that would just get you stuck.  Instead, you'll have to cut her off, which means you need to pull ahead of her.  Piano scales ring out over the water as your feet thump across the bridges.  Turning your head over your shoulder, you can see the planks fading away along with the sound of the notes in the air.

            A chain of sand dunes blocks your view of Sayaka, and for a few heart-pounding minutes you can only pray you're keeping up.  When you reach the end of them, you see that the transportalizer to Derse is just across the water.  Sayaka isn't.

            Just as you feel your heart sinking, you look back and realize that she's fallen behind you.  You've got her now!  All you have to do is cross over to the island with the transportalizer and block her way.  You look around quickly for the bridge—

            —and realize that there isn't one.

            "Sayaka!" you shout at her.  "Just stop for a moment and talk to me, you idiot!"  She doesn't even look your way.

            You're out of time.  Backtracking to find another way over is impossible, but even if it weren't, it would take you minutes longer than you have.  Even swimming, if you'd ever learned how to do it, might slow you down too much, especially with the drag from your clothes.  So there's no way by land or by sea, which leaves you with just one option:  air.  You equip your spear and back up from the shoreline a little to get a running start.  Then you charge forward, dig the head of the spear deep into the sand, and vault across the gap.

            At least, that's your intention.  In reality, you fall well short, right into the water.

            You panic and thrash and it does no good.  You go under, the near-black waves closing above your head.  Your lungs burn.  Almost all thought abandons you, and you are nothing but desperation and pain and lack and growing weakness.  Asphyxiation is like starvation sped up and concentrated, and all you can think is:  _Not like this._  You would scream it to the heavens if you could, but the words are choked off deep in your throat, drowned like your breath and extinguished like the light by the endless dark water around you.

            Then the light returns to your eyes, blurred but bright, and you can _almost_ breathe again.  Something's wrapped around you, pulling you, dragging you onto the sand.  You're rolled over and smacked across the back until you cough up all the water in your lungs.  After a few gasping breaths you start to process what's happening and manage to pull yourself up into a sitting position.  Sayaka stands over you, her expression unreadable.  She meets your eyes for a moment and then, without a word, turns to walk away.

            You grab her by the ankle and send her tumbling down into the sand.

            "What the Hell do you think you're doing?" you ask her.  You are drenched and salt-chapped and cold and filthy with the white paste the chalk sands make when mixed with water.  Sayaka doesn't look much better.

            "I'm going to bring Mami-san's and Madoka's killers to justice, of course.  What does it look like I'm doing?"  She tries to tug her leg away from you, but you hold fast to it.

            "It _looks_ like you're trying to kill yourself!"

            "I've been training!  I have a small chance, at least."

            "Yeah?  Well if you really want to do right by them, you'll _keep_ training until you have a _good_ chance!"

            "No!  I can't stand waiting any longer!"  She draws her sword from its specibus and whacks at your arms with the flat of the blade.  You hold on, which is really unbelievably thickheaded of you not just because it hurts, but because it's obvious where this is going.  You want to think there's no way that Sayaka would ever kill you over something this stupid.  You want to think there's no chance of the situation escalating any further than it has.  A part of you does think those things, and that part of you is an idiot, because you _saw_ what the father you'd always loved did to the rest of your family.  For a moment, you let yourself wonder whether he did it because they saw the noose and tried to stop him.

            Sayaka hits you again, hard enough to bruise this time.  You cry out in pain.  She suddenly goes very still, and the sword vanishes from her hand.

            "When the Hell did you get so bloodthirsty?" you ask her after a moment of strained silence.  "You were the one always saying that we shouldn't hurt anyone unless they attack us, and Madoka didn't even like the idea we were supposed to kill the Black King and Queen.  You really think she'd want you going nuts because of her?"

            "It isn't just because of her!  The people who did this — they work for the evil kingdom, right?  The ones who started the war and made all of this happen to begin with?  So they're also part of the reason why everyone...  Hitomi...  Kyousuke..."  To your horror, she breaks down sobbing right there.

            "Hey," you say gently.  You let go of her ankle.  She tries to get to her feet, but before she can manage it, you crawl up closer to her and get a hold on her shoulders.  "Hey, you're not going anywhere like this.  Just give me two weeks, all right?  If you just listen to me and back off for now, I'll spend the next two weeks doing nothing but level grinding with you, and then we'll both go together.  Deal?"

            Sayaka sniffles but looks you right in the eye.  "Do you think I'm beneath you?" she asks.

            "Um.  Excuse me, please," says a quiet voice that is neither yours nor Sayaka's, and you realize that Akemi is standing right above you.  It's a little weird that she got this close to you without you hearing her approach, especially with all the noise the piano keys make, but you have more important things to worry about right now.

            "Why would I think you're beneath me?"

            "I'm sorry for interrupting," Akemi continues, "but please listen to me!  I've finally figured out how to use my—"

            "Because it's all right for _me_ to accept help from _you_ ," Sayaka says venomously, "but not the other way around!"

            "What are you talking about?"

            "I'm going to go back—" Akemi tries again, but once more, Sayaka cuts her off.

            "You think you're the only one who knows what it's like to watch someone you care about self-destruct?  We were all worried about you, you idiot!  _I_ was worried about you!  'Hey, Kyouko, you could come stay at my house for a little while.  I don't have to tell my parents everything about you if you don't want me to.  We could make up some story, anything you like.  Or maybe I could just hide you in my closet!'  'No, that's fine, I'd rather keep stealing from convenience stores and sleeping in cardboard boxes and—'"

            Akemi stomps her foot in frustration.  "I'm going—"

            "Hey," you shoot back at Sayaka, "don't put words in my mouth!  Is it really that weird that I wouldn't want to rely on anyone but myself after what happened to—"

            "I'm _going_ to kill all three of us right now!" Akemi shouts.

            Both you and Sayaka instantly fall silent and just stare at her.

            "I'm sorry," she continues, much more quietly.  She holds her hands out, and a pair of silver bucklers appear floating in the air beneath her palms.  "I have to save Madoka no matter what.  Please forgive me."  She spins the bucklers and vanishes.

            The moment she's gone, all the light around you begins to fade, as though the universe itself were slowly sinking into the midnight-colored sea.  Sayaka grabs your hand, looking frightened but saying nothing.  You wrap your arms around her as everything goes black.

 


	4. Surviving Alone

teacupEnthusiast [TE] opened memo on board Daily Status.

TE: Welcome to roll call for Day 45. Everyone, report! 

clowcardFiftythree [CF] responded to memo.

CF: I'm here (^-^*)/

damnedifIcare [DI] responded to memo.

DI: im here and sayaka is with me

TE: Is she too busy to report in herself? 

DI: nah just lazy

mermaidMelody [MM] responded to memo.

MM: i'm the lazy one here?! 

MM: that's a funny thing to hear coming from that chumhandle

DI: arent you ever going to let that drop

MM: of course i will! all you have to do is let me pick a better name for you

DI: i already told you theres no way thats happening

TE: Ahem! 

TE: Akemi-san? Status? 

anarchistCook [AC] responded to memo.

AC: I'm not dead yet.

anarchistCook [AC] ceased responding to memo.

CF: I wish she wouldn't do that. I feel like I never get to just talk to her anymore ('^'*)

MM: am i the only one who thinks she's actually gotten weirder? 

MM: i wouldn't have believed it was possible if you'd told me two months ago

TE: It was a concise report. 

TE: Would you care to give yours next, Miki-san? 

MM: nothing much to report! kyouko and i have just been hanging out being legendary soldiers of justice

MM: wrecking underlings

MM: collecting grist

MM: helping out consorts

MM: you know

MM: hero stuff! 

TE: Have either of you made any actual progress? 

DI: that depends how you define progress

TE: Have you advanced the main plot of the game, or found any clues as to how to subvert it? 

DI: not really

DI: what about you have you found that one last super special frog that definitely exists and is really important

TE: I have! 

DI: what no way

DI: you had all of us searching all over that planet of yours and we never saw a trace of it

TE: That's because it wasn't on my planet. 

TE: Or anywhere in the Incipisphere, for that matter. 

DI: then where the hell was it

TE: Does it matter? 

DI: i guess not this whole game is pretty bullshit any way you look at it

KM: Um! Excuse me \\('o'*)

KM: If you can breed the genesis frog, that means it's pretty late in the game, right? 

KM: So... have we figured out what we're going to do yet? 

            There is far too long of a pause in which no one says anything at all. You glance over at Sayaka, whose expression looks kind of alarming in the flickering light of the Land of Spires and Lightning.

MM: well we're definitely not creating any new universes

MM: i mean, what kind of gods would any of us make, right? 

MM: but if we have the power to do that, then surely we can find a way to bring everyone back

TE: I think it may be time to consider the possibility that we can't. 

TE: When the Reckoning starts, we'll have to act quickly. If at that time we have yet to come up with a plan for resurrecting the Earth, we'll be left with no choice but to move forward with the plan we do have. 

TE: I know it's hard to accept the losses we've already sustained. But we can't hesitate. I'll do whatever it takes to keep from losing any of you. 

MM: i'd rather be lost

MM: i'd rather just disappear than say that everything that happened is all right! 

           She's all but shouting into her headset. You cross the space between the two of you and lay a hand on her shoulder. She doesn't look at you.

DI: hey dont say that dummy

TE: Miki-san, please don't. 

CF: I don't want Sayaka-chan to disappear \\(;_\\*)

MM: sorry

MM: i should know better than to say things that will upset everyone

MM: hey madoka, you still haven't given your report, right? 

CF: Um. Actually, I've kind of been putting it off, because I'm not really sure how to say this (-_-*);;

CF: It's possible I'm wrong, but I think I just created all of us. 

CF: And some of our parents. 

DI: you what

            You and Sayaka stand in shocked silence while Madoka explains all about the meteors and the appearifier and the paradox slime and the clones.  When she's finished, Sayaka rips her headset off and throws it to the ground.  You quickly deactivate yours to deal with her outburst.

            "What are we?" she demands of you, like you have any of the answers.  "We don't even have grandparents!  We aren't descended from humans at all!  Can someone like that, even if they look like a normal person, really be even a little bit human?"

            "Father didn't think so," you say, thinking aloud.  "That's what got him in so much trouble."  You can only imagine how much worse that whole thing would have gone over if anyone had realized he was talking about himself too.  You wonder if even he realized.

            "Humanity is extinct, isn't it?  We're not the last ones.  It's just gone."  Her fingers curl into her palms so tightly that you're afraid she'll cut herself on her nails.  "We can't bring it back.  Mami-san doesn't think so, and no one but me even bothered to argue with her.  And if we're not human, the new universe can't be humanity's legacy."

            "If we're not human," you answer slowly, "then humanity isn't our problem." 

            Sayaka stares at you, uncomprehending.  "How can you say that?" she asks, voice trembling.  "I don't believe you!"  It's harder for her.  For Madoka too, probably, although she doesn't make as much of a fuss about it.  They lost a lot in the meteor storm, but you and Mami lost everything long beforehand.  That doesn't mean you're happy about the Earth being destroyed.  It just means you have more practice with picking up the pieces and moving on.

            "If we were born here," you explain "then it's always been our destiny to play this game, hasn't it?  You keep saying we wouldn't make very good gods, but maybe you're not giving us enough credit.  Maybe we've been gods all along, and we should try to be the sort of heroes the game wants us to be."

            "I've _been_ trying," Sayaka says.  "I've been trying to play along, because I didn't know what else to do.  I wanted to protect the people here.  I wanted to protect _something_."  She gives a weak little smile so sad and bitter that you find it more terrifying than if she'd focused all the rage you've seen inside her into a glare aimed directly at you.  "You say we should accept our roles?  I'm the Knight of Void.  Doesn't that mean that there's nothing left for me to save?"

            "Hey," you say, "we still have each other, right?  That's not 'nothing.'"  You reach out to touch her shoulder again, but she shrugs away from you.

            "You're right, it isn't," she says, still with that dim, flickering smile.  "Maybe that's been my problem all along.  I think... I think I need some time to myself, just to get my head together a little.  Is that all right?"

            "Well, if it's what you really want..."  You notice your hand is still just kind of hanging awkwardly in the air where she dodged it and very smoothly bring it up and over your head to scratch the back of your neck, like _that_ was the motion you got distracted in the middle of performing.  "Sure, go ahead and do whatever.  I can handle myself just fine."

            "Of course."  For a moment, the smile falls away completely, and Sayaka looks so tired.  She rallies immediately though, grinning like she just caught herself saying something embarrassing and is silently laughing at herself for it.  "I shouldn't even have to ask.  You don't need me either, right?"  Before you can respond, she's running off between the spires, leaving you all on your own.

            "Damn it, Sayaka," you mutter under your breath.  You never know how to handle it when she says things like that, but up until now, she's always stayed close enough to you that you could at least just be there for her.  You don't want to crowd her, but you're also a little bit wary about leaving her on her own.  After thinking it over for a moment, you press your hand to the spirograph pendant hanging from your neck and say, "Hey, Momo!  Could you come here for a second?  I need your help with something."

            A ghostly crimson glow wafts out around the necklace and resolves itself into the figure of your sister.  "Sure thing, Big Sis!" she says.

            "Do you think you could follow Sayaka without her noticing?" you ask.  "I mean, don't get me wrong, it's not like I want you to spy on her, or anything weird like that.  Just sort of stay close enough to make sure you'll be there to help if she does anything stupid, you know?"

            Momo grins.  "Okay, Big Sis!  You can count on Momo!"

            "And don't do anything stupid yourself either, got it?" you call after her as she flies off.  You feel kind of bad saying that.  You're already forming a plan for what you should get to work on now that you don't have to worry about either of them for a while, and there's a niggling little part of you that wonders whether it might be the stupidest thing of all.

            At the very least, you should probably let everyone know where you're going.  That's just sensible.

damnedifIcare [DI] opened memo on board Additional Updates.

DI: so ive been thinking over what mami-san said about moving forward with the plan we have

DI: if were really going to do that ultimate alchemy thing at least one of us is going to have to kill a denizen and get the grist hoard from that right

DI: im at the top of my echeladder and ive got a pretty good weapon even if it isnt one of the super special double legendary ones or whatever so i think its probably time

DI: and poseidon should still be asleep so if i go now i can at least get a look at him before deciding whether im really ready to take him on and if i do i can maybe even get in a hit or two before he wakes up

DI: anyway thats my reasoning

DI: sorry akemi if it turns out not to be as good as i think it is and you end up having to clean up my mess

DI closed memo.

            Poseidon's underground palace, when you get to it, is enormous.  There aren't any underlings, but there are a fair number of dumb puzzles to navigate.  Many of the halls and stairways are lined with lightning spires like the ones on the surface, and you have to jump and weave through the deadly flickering webs they form like a thief in a heist movie dodging infrared alarm triggers.  You're not too surprised by those, since you've run into a few easier ones in other dungeons before now.  What really weirds you out are the flooded halls with airlocks on either end.  If you hadn't spent all that time messing around on LOSAS with Sayaka and asked her to teach you how to swim so you could enjoy the beaches together, they would be completely impassable.  You've seen a few things in the past month and a half that have made you suspect that this game is screwing with you and your friends personally, so you can't help but be suspicious of this too.  It kind of pisses you off to think that Skaia or whatever set this whole thing up could be patronizing enough to reward you for being friendly with Sayaka.  Of course, it pisses you off a lot more to have to perform acrobatics through an electric maze while you're dripping wet.  It's especially bad when your pesterchum startles you by pinging right at the worst possible time.  You snap pretty quickly when that happens, and end up just disabling it entirely.

            As you get deeper into the castle, you can hear Poseidon's snoring growing louder, which is good because otherwise you would start to wonder whether this stupid dungeon just went on forever.  It's also really weird and more than a little unfair, because when you actually reach him, he is very clearly not asleep.

            Poseidon is massive, the kind of monster for whom a whole roast giclops would be a light afternoon snack — which makes you feel about as significant as a sprig of parsley garnish.  He has the head and forelegs of a horse and the long, sinuous body of an eel.  He rears up when he sees you, uncoiling himself until his head scrapes the ceiling of the cavern.  In a voice like waves crashing against a stony cliff he asks,  "From what will you run?"

            "I'm not running from anything!" you say and, deploying your spear, charge.

            Poseidon folds forward, going into a controlled fall that will splatter you like an overripe tomato if he lands on top of you.  You were pretty much expecting that, and time your dodge to try to end up next to his face as it hits the cavern floor, figuring his eyes are a likely weak spot.  What you aren't expecting is the way the earth spikes up beneath you when his hooves connect with the ground, tossing you some twenty feet into the air.  You land on your back, your head bouncing once off of the stone with a _crack_ before settling.  You lie stunned as Poseidon once again draws himself up to his full height.

            "What you leave behind now," he tells you, "you will lose."

            "Did you not hear me the first time?" you yell.  "I said, 'I'm not running!'"  Not that you _could_ right now, even if you wanted to.  But this guy is really pissing you off, and foolish last words are better than cowardly ones.  "And I'm not losing this fight, _or_ that grist hoard you're guarding!"

            "That is your choice," Poseidon says, and plunges down at you once more.

            You fight through the paralysis and manage to push yourself up onto your elbows.  Your head is still spinning, and though you could probably at least manage to stand, you doubt you'd be capable of outrunning the earth-magic shockwave.  You barely survived the last one, and this time you'll be right at the epicenter — and that's just if the hooves don't crush you directly.  That seems to be what Poseidon is aiming for; when you look up, one is directly overhead, and so close you can make out the V-shaped groove in the sole.

            Well, _there's_ one idea.  You drop back on the ground and roll to the side, ending stomach-down, then tuck your head and legs in under your body and hope to God you've done this right.

            Poseidon's hoof comes down on top of you, and the world goes black.

            There's a sound louder than anything you've ever heard before, louder than anything you've ever even imagined.  It leaves your ears ringing and your bones vibrating in your flesh.  You are deafened and plunged into darkness — but you're alive, tucked into the gap between the hoof's curved wall and its triangular center.

            Thinking fast, you jab your spear upward and jam it into the dome of the sole.  Your strength is steadily coming back to you, and when Poseidon rears up again, you cling tightly to the shaft and go for a ride.  When you're high enough to not just smack into the ground, you trigger the release of the chain.  The spear shaft unfolds startlingly fast with gravity working for it.  Your stomach jumps into your throat as you enter free-fall, and then all but comes flying out of your mouth with the jolt you get when the chain hits its full length.  You swallow your lunch for a second time and swing up to the monster's neck, where you grab a fistful of fur with one hand and yank your spear back to you with the other.

            The climb up Poseidon's mane is perilous.  You need both your hands for it, so you carry your spear clamped tightly between your ankles, occasionally using its blade like a crampon.  The beast thrashes and rolls and, when that fails to shake you off, starts breathing out stampedes of horses shaped from sea foam that charge you with the force of ocean waves.  Some of his attacks you dodge, others you just weather  By the time you get close enough to take a shot at his eye, you're as bruised as you are soaked, and your arms feel like cooked noodles.  You do get there, though, and when you toss your spear, it strikes true, piercing clear through the gleaming black orb and unfolding explosively inside his skull.

            You're glad the monsters in this game don't bleed, or you would be drenched in something a lot nastier than water right now.  As it is, you just have to worry about riding the body down to the ground and making sure you're on top of it when it hits.  Fortunately it doesn't explode into grist until after the impact, though that still leaves you with quite a few feet to fall on your own with no meaty cushion beneath you.  It's not the worst thing you've survived in the past ten minutes, but it still hurts.

            By the time you manage to scrape yourself off the floor, you're completely exhausted.  You decide to take it easy for a while and not rush too much while collecting the grist.  There's a _lot_ of it, not just from Poseidon's death, but also the treasure trove in a large chamber at the opposite end of the cavern from where you entered.  Even if you were working as fast as you could, it would probably take you close to an hour to gather it all.  At least there's a transportalizer at the back of the chamber, so you won't have to go trekking all the way back through the palace.

            You're just about done there when you realize that the others are probably waiting to hear from you.  You boot up your headset and open the Additional Updates board intending to report in.  Before you can, though, you're struck by just how many new topics with increasingly urgent-sounding titles there are.  You feel the dread growing tight and heavy in your chest, like a chain coiled around your heart, as you open them up one by one and read through the logs as quickly as you can.

            The Reckoning started without you.  Everyone was trying desperately to contact you and feared the worst when you didn't respond.  Sayaka seems to have taken that really badly.  She disrupted Mami's strategy meeting by yelling first at Akemi to just fix everything already, then at Madoka for defending Akemi.  Then she apologized abruptly and disappeared without another word.  You skim quickly through the rest of the memos, searching desperately for any trace of azure, but there's no sign of her again until the second-most recent.

mermaidMelody [MM] opened memo on board Additional Updates.

MM: right! so i've decided

MM: i'm going for the queen myself

MM: mami-san always takes so long to plan big battles so i guess if you don't have to worry about that you might have more time to come up with a better plan than beating the game on its own terms

MM: it's not much but it's the only thing i can think of right now

MM: besides maybe if she gets taken out soon enough prospit won't be destroyed

MM: i know the people there aren't the same species as us

MM: but when you think about it neither are humans so that doesn't mean much

MM: actually i queued this memo to not show up for an hour so if you're reading this it's all old news

MM: if you haven't heard back from me yet it probably didn't work

MM: but even so I don't regret it

MM: kyouko tried her best and i had to do the same

MM: you guys are the best friends i've ever had

MM: so keep doing your best too

MM: i'm sorry for always causing problems for everyone

MM closed memo.

            You don't think.  You just run for the transportalizer, and in seconds find yourself standing on the top of your house.  Your eyes are drawn immediately to the meteors streaking across the sky.  While you're looking at them, you notice the glowing crimson figure flying slowly and erratically toward you, carrying something larger than itself.  It's Momo, you realize with relief, and she's got Sayaka with her.  Good old Momo.  She's really grown into a responsible kid you can trust.  If you were any more proud of her, you think your heart might just explode.

            It's not until they're directly overhead that you spot the hole in Sayaka's chest.  You barely have time to process it before Momo pulls up suddenly, her whole body flickering, and both of them come tumbling out of the sky to land with a crash at your feet.

            You drop to your knees, screaming both their names.  Sayaka isn't breathing.  Momo is, heavily, but she has wounds all over her that you failed to notice before because her blood is exactly the same color as the rest of her.  "It's okay, Big Sis," she assures you.  "Momo got her to you on time.  You can still revive her dreamself.  You'll know what to do."  Her glow is fading, and her body grows steadily more transparent as she speaks.

            "What about you?" you yell at her.  "I told you not to do anything stupid!"

            "Big Sis, you beat your Denizen, didn't you?" she asks with a pained smile.  "You're so cool!  If you can do that, you definitely don't need a sprite anymore."

            "I need my baby sister!"  You scoop her up into an embrace.  She weighs so little, and that weight is diminishing by the second.  "Please, please don't leave again."

            "Momo was never going to stay for long.  I'm just happy we got to say goodbye this time."  Then she's gone, vanished in a twinkle of light, and your arms are empty.

            Your throat clenches so tightly you can barely breathe.  You cry, and your tears run into your open, howling mouth, filling it with the taste of salt water.  You are drowning in your grief, but you have to keep your head above the surface — for Sayaka.  Momo said you would know what to do.

            This is a story, you think.  A rotten, childish, laughably cliché story.  You turn your head over the body and let your tears fall on her face and chest.  There's no magical glow, no indication that you've solved the puzzle, but Momo did say it would be her dreamself affected.  Maybe you won't know until you go find her on Prospit.  In any case, there's nothing else you can think of to do.

            Well, _almost_ nothing.  But it really couldn't be _that_ , could it?

            "No, it's exactly what you're thinking," says Akemi.  You twist around to see her standing behind you.  Her hair is down.  That's the signal that means you have to quickly do anything she tells you without question.  Akemi only lets her hair down when she's come from a doomed timeline she's decided to erase.

            "How do you know what I'm thinking?" you snap, because you're in no mood to not ask questions.  "And anyway, you're late.  You have to go back further."

            "I've tried that several times already.  It ended badly.  The death of our sprites seems to be a fixed part of the alpha timeline.  And I know because if you don't do it now, you'll blurt it out later when you realize it would have been the right thing."

            "Like Hell it's fixed!  I'm not doing anything you say until you save my sister!"

            "No.  I refuse to throw away any more lives on this dead end."  She tosses her hair.  "If you won't do it, I'll be forced to step in for you.  I would really rather it not come to that."

            You feel your face burning all the way down to your neck.  "Could you at least not stand there watching like a creep?"

            "Again, I would rather not.  But after you've been so contrary with me, I have to see for myself that you'll cooperate."

            You suppose you had that coming.  It's not like it matters at this point, you think, and lean down over Sayaka to press a kiss to her mouth.

            It isn't like anything you've ever wanted.  Her lips are cold and slightly stiff.  Your hair hangs down around your face and drapes over hers, and some of it gets in your mouth.  If things were right, if she were actually here with you, she would be giggling and pulling away to scold you for tickling her.  But everything is wrong, and Sayaka stays still and silent.  You realize with a kind of dull shock that this is your first kiss.  Then you realize that it's also Sayaka's first kiss, and the shock turns to gut-twisting, directionless anger.  Sayaka has always been a true romantic.  She'll be crushed when she learns that it was taken from her this way.  Right now, you want nothing more than to figure out what's responsible for all of this bullshit and crush it, too, but you aren't remotely sure that that's even possible.

            When you come back up, Akemi is gone.  You know that was a doomed time clone, so you guess you're glad she left before she kicked the bucket.  You've seen more than enough death already.

            You pull yourself to your feet and activate your headset once again.

damnedifIcare [DI] opened memo on board Additional Updates.

DI: im okay

DI: sayaka will be too

DI: we have to get to prospit NOW

DI closed memo.


	5. Dying Together

Prospit is already ablaze by the time you get to its moon.  It's probably partly Sayaka's fault for tossing that statuette into her kernelsprite, thinking it would be cool to have one of her favorite anime characters as a guide and protector.  She wasn't wrong, but Hikarusprite is nowhere to be found now, and the Queens fight their apocalyptic battle with ruby-studded bastard swords, blasts of magic flame, and explosive balls of red lightning.

            As you survey the damage from a gold-railed balcony, something smacks you across the head.  You turn around to see Mami looking imperious and deeply disappointed and massaging her knuckles as though your skull just assaulted the back of her hand, rather than the other way around.  "Glad to see you too, you old tyrant," you tell her.

            Mami is not amused.  "I've said it again and again:  with our forces spread so thin, we have to make sure communication channels are open at all times."  She's trying to sound tough, but you know her well enough to pick out the trembling in her voice.  "If we don't..."

            "Kyouko-chan!" Madoka shouts, barreling past your leader to tackle you in a hug.  "Thank goodness you're all right!  But where is Sayaka-chan?"

            You look for Akemi and find her looming in the background, nonchalantly leaning against an archway.

            "She should be somewhere around here," you tell Madoka.  "Her main body died in the fight against the Black Queen, but I'm pretty sure I was able to keep her dreamself from dying with it.  So she'll be living in that form from now on, I guess."

            Madoka's eyes go wide, but Mami just nods grimly.  "I see.  You want to be the one to go look for her, I presume?"  You find yourself blushing a little, and Mami smiles.  "Go on.  We'll help Her Majesty keep the Black Queen busy.  Just keep your headset on this time!"

            "Right!" you say, and vault over the balustrade to run along the rooftops of the level just below.

            Leaping between balconies, racing the collapse of crumbling bridges, you quickly make your way to the dream towers.  Fires rage in many of the streets below, threatening worse than bruises or broken bones if you slip and fall, but you're a skilled Thief by now and you don't fear them.  When you get to Sayaka's room, she isn't there, but that's only mildly discouraging.  Of course she wasn't going to make this easy for you.  She never does.

            The spires of the dream towers are the highest points on Prospit's moon, so the obvious course of action is to scale one to the top and get a good look around.  The problem with that idea, as you soon discover, is that from such a great height, individual people just look like dots.  At least, you think, you can count on her being a differently colored dot.  The chess people are all dressed in blue-and-white china patterns, but Sayaka's nightgown is bright gold.  Of course, that just means she's going to blend right in with the architecture.

            You consider for a moment that maybe you should have let Mami go look for her.  You've just remembered that you're kind of shit at thinking things through.

            You're about to clamber down to give your arms a break while you try to come up with a different plan, when something unexpected catches your eye.  Off in the distance, a shadow falls over a street full of flames, where no shadow should be able to exist.  The fire separates into vortices that shrink as they spin, like the darkness is sucking them up.  In a matter of seconds, they've vanished completely, and the shadow retreats.  A handful of Prospitians rush out from the buildings that are still intact to dash through the charred pathway before surrounding fires can reclaim it.

            Void magic.  That has to be one of Sayaka's fraymotifs.  Her element is cold, dark, absolute emptiness, the antithesis of light and warmth.  Leave it to her to use it for fighting fires.

            You head off in the direction the shadow came from and soon find yourself at the launch pads, where mobs of panicked carapacians cram themselves into every available shuttle.  Sayaka kneels at the center of the chaos, palms pressed flat to the ground, head bowed in concentration.  Tendrils of void magic spread from her fingertips like fog spreading out from the sea.  They ward the flames away from the platforms and clear paths into the city.

            "Of course.  I don't know what I was expecting," you say as you approach her.  Up close, you can see the beads of sweat collecting on the back of her neck and the slight adrenaline-twitching of her hands and arms.  "Just how long have you been at that?"

            "Does it matter?" she asks dully.

            "Guess not," you admit, and sit down cross-legged beside her.  "You know the worst thing about your stupidity?  It's infectious.  Go ahead, keep doing what you're doing.  When you knock yourself out, I'll be here to carry you away from the fire."

            "I'm glad you're alive," Sayaka says, "but you don't belong here.  You should be fighting with the others for your new universe."

            "Give me a break!" you snap at her, because she has driven you to snapping.  "If you really don't get it yet, you must be even denser than I thought.  I'm not going to let you kill yourself — not now, not ever!"

            "You're the one who's being dense!  I don't _want_ to live to win the game!  I don't want the Ultimate Reward!  How can I accept a reward for letting everyone on Earth die?"  With her face turned down, you don't realize she's crying until you see the tears falling on the golden pavement.  "When this all started, I thought it was an awful mistake that someone like me was one of the few humans to survive.  But if it was planned that way from the start, if I was created to be this much of a waste of space, that has to be some cruel joke, right?  I don't think it's funny, and I don't want to play anymore!"

            "Sayaka," you growl, "I swear if you make me listen to another second of this, I'm going to knock you out right now and let the launch pads burn."

            "Don't!" she says instantly, like that scares her so much more than the idea of burning herself.

            "Do you know what Momo just did to me?" you blurt out.  "She went and got herself killed for my sake."  Sayaka doesn't respond, but you can hear her breath hitch.  "She said it was okay, because I didn't need her anymore, even though I told her that of course I still did."

            "I'm sorry," Sayaka says.  "I'm so, so sorry.  I don't understand why people keep dying.  Have we really done that much wrong?"

            "Was that a bad thing for me to say to her, I wonder?" you continue more softly.  You find a sudden wistfulness has overtaken you and sapped all of the anger out of your voice. "It shouldn't really matter who I do or don't need.  People should live for their own sakes.  That's why you're driving me insane right now.  You're not a waste of space.  You're one of the only good things I have left, and I can't help needing you even if that's selfish.  If you won't act like a normal person and put yourself first, I'll just have to do it for you."  You reach out to stroke her hair.  Even though she's sweating, her scalp feels icy cold, and you shudder.  "What the Hell are you doing to yourself?  Your corpse was warmer than this when I kissed it."

            "When you _what_?" Sayaka squeaks.  Her concentration breaks for just a split second, and the shadows around her dissipate for a moment before streaming out again with redoubled force.

            "To revive you, stupid!" you protest quickly.  "That's what you have to do when another player dies, or their dreamself will die too!"

            Before you can gauge her reaction, you are blinded by a flash of ruby-colored light, quickly followed by a rush of heat and the roar of an explosion just overhead.  The ground shakes.  Your vision clouds over with murky green blots, so you can only imagine the rain of shrapnel that must be pummeling the platform.  You have no way of telling whether there's anything falling directly above you, or where you should dodge if there is.  All you can do is curl yourself into as small a target as possible and cover your head.

            Then you remember Sayaka.  You try calling out to her, but can't even hear your own voice over the ringing in your ears.  You reach out to where she was just a moment ago, and your hand comes down on a chunk of hot metal.  Screaming out curses, you pull it away and instinctively try to cram as much of it as you can into your mouth.  Your whole palm tastes like blood.  If Sayaka didn't get out of the way of that thing before it hit...  The images that spring into your mind turn your stomach so badly that you almost reach out again to feel around the ground to prove them wrong.  You restrain yourself, though, because getting yourself injured worse won't help anyone.

            It probably takes less than half a minute for your eyes to clear, though it feels like a lot longer.  When they finally do, you can see the wreckage of a shuttle lying in smoldering, twisted heaps all around you.  There are bodies too — or parts of them, anyway — but you try not to look at those for too long.  It's always been disturbing how the carapacians are the only creatures in this game that don't disappear when they die.

            You quickly scan the rubble for Sayaka, and soon find her standing just a few feet off, enveloped in tendrils of shadow that writhe and flicker around her.  Her back is turned to you, her face tilted toward the sky.  You look up with her and see the Black Queen approaching on raven's wings, fish fins and long skirts swirling in the thermal winds, fiery orange flowers patterning her black shell as though painted or tattooed on.  As you watch, she takes aim at a shuttle still waiting on the ground and launches a crackling red orb of pure energy from the palm of her hand.  One of Sayaka's shadows darts out at the projectile like a frog's tongue catching a fly.  The orb detonates when struck, and the lash of void magic swallows most of the blast.  The Queen's cat-shaped head whips around, her eyes narrowing as they land on Sayaka, and you remember that she's already killed her once before.

            You think of kneeling over your best friend's broken body and the taste of cold skin, and anger seizes hold of your heart before fear has a chance to get a grip.  You deploy your spear.  Your injured hand hurts when you bend it, but at least the cool metal soothes the burn.  Still, you wince as you feel the oozing wound stick to the weapon's shaft.  It's sure going to be fun tearing your hand away later.

            The Black Queen swoops down towards Sayaka, firing repeatedly as she flies.  Sayaka stands her ground, shielding herself from each attack the same way she shielded the shuttle.  It's impressive, but still suicidal.  She doesn't have any offensive weapons on her, and her defense is imperfect; the closer the stifled explosions get, the more heat you can feel escaping them.  When the Queen is just a few yards away, Sayaka's magic collides with a shot close enough that the blast knocks her off her feet.  You leap in to take her place, and the Black Queen is on top of you before she has a chance to see you coming.  Her sword is already raised, but your spear strikes her square in the chest before she can bring it down.

            She was easier than Poseidon.  You think about how lame that is as you collapse to your knees with your head swimming and your breath sticking partway down your throat.

            Your chest and shoulder hurt.  The sound of your spear clattering to the ground is strangely distant, but the fact you can hear it at all means the explosion didn't permanently deafen you, so that's good.  You also hear Mami and Madoka shouting your name.  Looking up, you can see them running towards what's left of the launch pads.  You can see the Black Queen too, standing above you with blood dripping from her sword.  Her dress is torn where you stabbed her.  Beneath it, there are some hairline cracks in her shell and a few droplets of blood welling up from them.  Your chest and shoulder _really_ hurt.

            "You've got to be kidding," you mouth voicelessly.  Then you tumble forward and are gone before your face hits the pavement.

* * *

            You jolt straight up in the bed in your tower to clutch at your chest.  For your efforts, your hand is instantly slicked with warm blood.  You can't feel your other hand at all, or any of the arm connected to it.  One quick glance confirms that it's only barely still attached to you.  Thinking about survival with as much focus as you can manage through the haze of pain and blood loss, you lie down again on your back.  Working with just one hand, you pull the bed sheets out, wad them up, and do your best to mold them around your cloven shoulder. You bleed through in a matter of seconds.

            So you're going to die in your own bed.  Well, you can't say you ever expected _that_.  You might even call it a nice surprise, or at least a darkly funny one.

            Suddenly, your hand feels dry again.  Looking down at your shoulder, you see the red stain on the makeshift bandage retreating as though it were being sucked back into you.  When it's vanished completely, you pull the bed sheets away to find your wound closing itself up.  In moments, the pain is gone along with the blood.

            Sayaka.  The last thing you told her was what to do if someone died.  You blush, and your fingers fly up to brush against your lips.  In another instant, you're furious at yourself for reacting like that.  It isn't romantic, and, having been on the other side of it, you should _know_ that.

            You don't have long to beat yourself up about it, though, because just then, a nearby blast rocks the tower.  You decide it's time to get moving.  The problem, as you discover when you climb out the window and prepare to scale down the outer wall, is that there's nowhere to go.  Everything below you is aflame.  You sidle all the way around the tower looking for a safe place to drop down, but find nothing.  On all sides, a sea of fire laps against the walls not thirty feet beneath you, swelling up well above the rest of the Prospitian skyline.

            Forcing back panic, you try to run through your options only to find you don't really have any.  You can jump into the fire, or you can stay here and wait to roast or for the tower to crumble.  This body is your dreamself, though.  Maybe you can still fly.  It doesn't feel like you can, but maybe it's a mind-over-matter sort of thing.  If it is, you can definitely handle this.  You've done enough acrobatics at this point to have deadened your fear of falling.

            The tower shakes again, and you almost lose your grip.  You turn your face toward the sky and try to convince yourself that there's a safe platform not too far below you.  It's not even a difficult jump.  All you have to do is let go.

            You let go.

            The very instant you watch your hands slip away from their holds, you know that you're not flying.  You reach out desperately to regain your grasp, and your fingertips just barely brush the windowsill.  The contact lasts for longer than it should, and for a second you think that you may be flying a little after all, or that you're somehow, against all logic, holding on.  Then you see the cracks in the tower and the glimpses of sky showing through them, and you realize that the whole thing is coming down with you.  Your mind frosts over with the same shock that hit you when you fell at the feet of the Black Queen, so you guess you really must be about to die again.  You wonder what will kill you first:  the fall, the fire, or the shrapnel raining down around you.

            You close your eyes, expecting pain from above or below.  You aren't expecting the thing that comes slamming into you from the side.  Whatever it is wraps around you, sucking the heat from your body like the touch of cold metal on bare skin.  It's a relief from the flames for all of a second, before you start shivering.  You open your eyes and find yourself in Sayaka's arms.  Looking up at her grimly determined face, you think at first that it must just be cast in shadow, but quickly realize that her skin has turned lead gray.  Holding you tight, she dives straight into the fires, racing the crumbling architecture that threatens to crush you both.   The shadows wrapped around you protect you from burning.

            The streets themselves are cracked and rippled.  Sayaka flies you down through a fissure and into the planet's chain-bedecked core.  She drops you on a slab of green stone and collapses panting on the blue slab next to it.  You only barely have time to notice their colors before falling chunks of debris from the dream tower and possibly other buildings cover the hole you came in through, blotting out most of the light so that you can only make out shapes.  Looking around, you can't see any other way out of here that isn't likewise blocked by wreckage.

            With an unintelligible scream, Sayaka flies back up and attacks the obstruction, first pushing at it, then tugging on it, and finally just pummeling it with her hands and feet.  It doesn't budge an inch.  She then wheels around the cavernous room and tries throwing her weight against the walls, the ceiling, even the apparently functionless chains.  When none of them give, she flops back down on the slab and begins banging her fists against her own head with the same desperate viciousness.

            "Hey!" you say, reaching across the gap to grab her wrists.  "Cut that out!"

            " _B'liglithy olglothal sthla dlislu_!" she shouts at you.

            "What the Hell?  Did your aspect eat your brain?"  Void powers are the weirdest.  They've always kind of creeped you out, because near as you can tell, they're connected to those giant monsters on the other side of Derse that Homura talks to — and those are _definitely_ creepy.  You guess it's not surprising that something like this would come of Sayaka using them more than she could really handle.

            She does say something to answer you, but you can't understand a word of it.  While she's talking, you notice that even with her there acting as a giant, living ice cube, the room is getting steadily hotter.

            "Man," you say, "it's like we're trapped in an oven."

            Sayaka babbles some more, sounding frustrated almost to the point of tears.

            "Huh?  Is that what you were trying to tell me?"  She nods.  "Oh well, don't worry about it too much.  This is probably one of those doomed timelines, right?  Akemi will just reset everything, and then none of this will even matter."

            Sayaka makes a helpless little sound that could almost be whimpering.

            "Yeah," you admit, "I'm scared too.  Dying certainly wasn't fun the first time.  The thing is, though, I've completely lost track of how many times you and I have almost died — or actually died, even! — in just the last few hours.  Kind of messed up, huh?"  You grin at her, and even manage a small, weak laugh.  "I don't know about you, but I'm ready for a break.  Even if we're just doomed time clones, I definitely feel like we have souls.  I bet I'll get to see Momo again, and you'll get to see your parents and your friends from school.  So let's just relax and let our alpha timeline selves be the chumps who have to deal with all of this game's shit."  You can't understand anything from Sayaka's answer, or even read much from her face in the darkness, but you feel her hands starting to shake.  "I guess that's easier said then done, huh?  You know, if you want, I can try that mind-stealing thing on you, and then maybe you won't have to be afraid or anxious until it's over."  You really don't like the idea of doing that to Sayaka, but it's all you can think of to offer.  If it's what she wants, you'll choke back your feelings and do it.

            Sayaka shakes her head vigorously and tugs her wrists free from your grip.  For a moment you're worried you've just gone and scared her more, but then she leans back in and takes hold of your hands, slipping her fingers between yours.  She opens her mouth as though about to say something, then closes it again and just squeezes your hands instead.

            You laugh again, and this time it isn't forced.  "Geeze, why do you always have to see right through me?  Yeah, you're right.  If you left first, I'd be all alone.  That would suck."  You rub your fingertips over the backs of her knuckles and wince a bit when you feel how badly she's skinned them.  Sayaka can really be an idiot sometimes — but she's a noble and determined idiot, and, if you're being honest with yourself, that's a big part of why you love her.

As the whole world around you begins to rumble and shake, and the cavern walls and ceiling begin to collapse, and backdrafts of fire come rushing in through the gaps, you pray to God that somewhere out there is a universe where both of you get to live.

* * *

            When you come to, you're floating in midair.  For a moment, your heart feels perfectly light.  As much as you've tried to deny it, you've been growing increasingly uncertain that Heaven even exists, or that you'll get there if it does, but now it seems like there's nowhere else you could possibly be.  Then you notice the chunks of golden wreckage floating around you.

            It has to be a bad sign when you find yourself feeling disappointed that you're still alive.

            When you glance around, you see Sayaka floating right beside you, and that at least makes you feel a little bit better.  The shadows are gone, and her skin is back to normal.  Those are both good things, but what's weird is that she's suddenly wearing something completely different from her golden nightgown.  The whole outfit is in varying shades of blue, from the cerulean undershirt, to the royal blue trousers and tunic, to the midnight-colored hood and cape.  It looks bizarre, like an American superhero costume, but you guess that suits her well enough.  It also looks oddly familiar.

            "The whole planet," she says quietly.  You're relieved to hear she's got her normal voice back too, but you would be even more relieved if it didn't sound so dull.  "It's so strange.  You'd think you'd only ever see something that awful once in a lifetime at worst, right?  I wonder how many of them got away."

            _Well, they all told us it was coming_ , you don't say, because you doubt Sayaka would appreciate that right now.  Instead, you reach out to take her hand again, but freeze when you catch sight of your own arm and realize that your clothes have also mysteriously changed.  You look down at your own outfit, and then back at Sayaka's, and finally recall what over the last month and half you had almost managed to forget.

            This is what both of you were wearing in the dream where she stabbed you.


	6. What Skaia Knows

anarchistCook [AC] opened memo on board Locked To Sakura-san and Miki-san

AC: I hope that gets your attention. 

AC: Please respond as soon as you are able. 

damnedifIcare [DI] responded to memo.

DI: whats up

mermaidMelody [MM] responded to memo.

MM: is everyone all right? 

MM: why did you lock this board? 

AC: I'll get to that. First, what's your situation? 

DI: we both died again and now we can fly and were suddenly wearing these really dorky clothes do you have any idea whats going on there

DI: also were at sayakas house by the alchemiter because we figured getting our gear back would be the fastest way to find you guys

AC: I see. So you've both gone god tier. 

AC: It's the same for me. Since then, I've been working through loops to buy time for research on the subject. 

AC: As you've noticed, you are more powerful now. Your new abilities are not limited to flight, though as they are class- and aspect-specific, I do not know all of the details. 

AC: More importantly, you now have immortality and limited invincibility. You won't die naturally, and if you are killed, you will revive unless the death was either heroic or just. 

MM: you're joking right? 

MM: i already said i'm not going to be a god! 

AC: Apparently it was never your decision. 

MM: then whose decision was it?! 

MM: i never asked to be immortal. i never asked to survive the end of the world. i've never been special in any other way so why is this happening to me and not someone else? 

AC: I wonder. 

MM: what's that supposed to mean? do you know anything or not?

DI: hey wait up

DI: what do you mean by heroic or just

AC: Hard to say. My sources are annoyingly vague. 

AC: To my understanding, a heroic death is courageous and in some way meaningful. I don't know whether it's required that it actually accomplish anything, however. 

AC: A just death is "deserved". Perhaps this mechanic is the game's way of protecting paradox space from the possibility of an invincible god gone corrupt. Or perhaps it's simply to keep players from becoming truly immortal by abandoning heroism altogether. 

            That gives you pause.  You were liking the idea that when Sayaka stabs you, you might not stay dead for long, but that once again brings up the question of why she would do it in the first place.  You've spent a lot of time worrying about her going nuts like your father did — but he was _your_ father, after all, and you are his daughter.  Why has it never occurred to you that you might be the one who ends up going nuts?  You've never known Sayaka to be anything but just, so why did you never before consider that you might end up doing something for which you would deserve to be killed?

MM: we get it. you can't tell us much about that either

MM: so tell us about you and mami-san and madoka. where are you guys? 

AC: First of all, I've gone through a couple loops to move Madoka's and Tomoe-san's dreamselves off of Prospit before its destruction. 

AC: You asked why the board is locked. The reason is that I wanted to tell both of you that without Madoka learning. I doubt she'll have time to sleep before the game ends, and my hope is that believing she has only one life left will encourage her to be less reckless. 

AC: On the other hand, if she does die and I am not around to revive her, I don't want either of you thinking it's useless to try. 

MM: do you make a habit of keeping things from people for their own good? because now i'm wondering what you might be hiding from us

AC: Do you want to hear the rest of what I have to say or not? 

MM: i wonder! 

DI: yeah we do

            Sayaka elbows you in the ribs. You elbow her right back, which is apparently the right thing to do, because you catch her smiling a little even as she huffs in frustration. For a moment, even with tensions so high, it feels like being back in the old days. Dear God, you don't want to lose this girl or her friendship. Even with everything else you've lost, you think you can be okay as long as the two of you stay like this.

AC: As foretold, the White Queen lost her duel. The Black Queen left Prospit in flames, and we pursued her. 

AC: We ended up fighting on Derse. It was a long and difficult battle that we only barely won. 

AC: Tomoe-san did the most damage, but she was taken out early on. In the end, I was able to strike a crippling blow, but I was badly wounded in the process. 

MM: what do you mean mami-san was taken out? is she all right? 

AC: I'm getting to that. 

AC: I lost consciousness. Thankfully, because of what I'd done, Madoka was able to finish the battle on her own. She brought me to my quest bed on LORSAG, where I died and revived as a god tier. 

AC: Madoka informed me that she attempted to revive Tomoe-san, but without success. That made sense, since the destruction of her dreamself on Prospit would make the revival process impossible. 

AC: The obvious solution was to go back and rescue her dreamself, which, as I have already mentioned, I did. 

AC: At this point I should note that although I have been using the past tense, from your perspective, these events are still in progress. 

AC: I decided I could save us all time by looping around and explaining this to you before we meet up. Even if it only gains us a few minutes, those few minutes might make all the difference in the fight against the Black King. 

AC: Which means that you don't need to know where we are, because in about half an hour, we will come meet you. 

AC: Finish whatever alchemy you're working on, and prepare for the final battle. 

AC closed memo.

            "What is her problem?" Sayaka fumes.  "Would it really have been so hard to say at the beginning, 'No one is currently dead, so don't worry?'"  She does her best to imitate Akemi's quiet monotone, but her best, in this case, isn't very good.  You think she probably realizes that, because there's just that much extra frustration behind the test swings she takes with her newly re-alchemized sword.

            Watching her gives you an idea.  "Hey, Sayaka, can you help me out with something?" you ask, voice perfectly casual.  You're a lot better at faking nonchalance than she is.

            "What?"  She doesn't look at you as she answers.  She's too entirely focused on her sword practice, stepping quickly and lightly around the room, blocking and lunging against imaginary enemies.  You've never seen her act like this before.  Maybe she's trying to get her new body used to the feel of a sword.  Or maybe she's psyching herself up for the final battle, attempting to trick herself back into the mindset that you all really are dashing heroes and combat is little more than a game.  What you're about to propose might not help so much with that, but you have to try it anyway.

            "Stab me through the heart."

            " _What_?!"  Sayaka whips around so violently to face you that she cleanly decapitates a table lamp without even trying.

            "Apparently we revive when we're killed now, right?  I'm just saying that before we go into battle, we should test it out to see how it works.  At the very least, it would be a good idea to figure out how long the process takes, and there might be some side effects it would be helpful to know about in advance."

            "Are you crazy?  All we have to go on is Akemi's word, and she even admitted she doesn't know much about it.  What if she's completely wrong?  Or what if you would 'deserve' to stay dead just for being enough of a stupid jerk to ask that of me?"

            Unfortunately, she has a point.  You really can't afford to underestimate the extents to which this game will go to screw you over.  Still, you think you're on to something here.  With just a bit more time and information, you're sure you can come up with a way to make your vision play out somehow that doesn't end with you permanently dead.  You just have to hope that nothing goes horrifically wrong before then.

            You return to the alchemiter.  Finally, you have a chance to use the code you found along with the grist horde your Denizen was guarding.  The weapon it makes is called Poiseidon's Trident, which is weird because the Poiseidon you faced had hooves that probably would have prevented him from wielding it.  You try combining it with your old Rosso Phantasma and end up with something called a Death By Water:  a double-headed spear, obsidian black with splotches of bright red, green, and purple like splattered neon paint.  It's far lighter than it should be, given how ludicrously massive the blades are, and the shaft is so thin you have to wonder how those blades don't warp it.  It doesn't even _look_ entirely real, like it's dropped out of a different universe where optical physics are fundamentally different.  It's definitely an endgame weapon, and with any luck, it should do more to the Black King than your Rosso Phantasma did to the Queen.

            You try messing around with the codes to make a similar weapon in sword form for Sayaka, but for some reason, all of your attempts produce only bouquets of flowers.  You guess it makes sense, given how the punch cards work, that some combinations would randomly code for items completely unrelated to either of the original two.  In this case, though, you're more inclined to think that the game is just fucking with you.

            Sayaka keeps playing with her sword.  She's obviously agitated, which isn't surprising given how she's been quietly roped into a final battle she never wanted any part of.  She could just refuse to fight, of course, but you know that she'd never abandon the rest of you like that.  The only person she's actually willing to hurt is herself — which is why it would be really mean to ask her to spar with you right now and then trick her into stabbing you while the stakes are relatively low.  Still, you think, it might be worth it in the long run.  Even if you do stay dead, it should be easy enough for Akemi to fix — though knowing Akemi, she wouldn't try particularly hard to hide what happened from Sayaka, who _really_ doesn't need any more reasons to hate herself.

            Just as you're considering that, Akemi and Madoka show up.  You're kind of relieved to be interrupted, but less relieved to realize that Mami isn't with them.

            Sayaka notices the same thing.  "Where's Mami-san?" she asks instantly, glaring at Akemi.

            Madoka, who seemed withdrawn from the moment she walked in, looks shocked.  "Homura-chan, I thought you said you talked to them!"

            Akemi tilts her head.  "Like I said, she was killed in the battle with the Black Queen."

            Both you and Sayaka flinch.  "What the Hell?" you blurt out.

            "You told us you went back and rescued her dreamself so she could be revived!" Sayaka snaps.

            "I did.  However, it failed to split the timeline."

            Almost in unison, you and Sayaka shoot back:  "What's that supposed to mean?"

            "It means," Akemi explains patiently, "that it was a stable time loop all along.  When Madoka attempted to revive her, it didn't fail because her dreamself had been destroyed along with Prospit.  Rather, it was simply too late.  In the time it took to finish fighting the Black Queen, her wounds had transferred to her dreamself and killed both bodies."

            "So go back again and try something else!" Sayaka demands.

            "If the battle against the Black King goes badly, I will do just that.  However, any more complicated solution I attempt is likely to have unforeseen consequences.  The four of us surviving to the final fight of the game — and, moreover, powering up to the extent that we have — is by far the best outcome we have yet to achieve.  I refuse to throw it away on a gamble that could easily set us many steps back."

            "It's not going to work," you tell her.

            "How do you know?"

            "Remember what you said earlier about 'heroic or just'?  Well, you had it all wrong.  It isn't about balanced mechanics, it's just that this game loves a 'good story'.  Maybe that doesn't work in our favor unless we go god tier, but Skaia won't let us win while one of the 'legendary heroes' is pointlessly dead."

            "Um," says Madoka, "I don't think that's quite right."  All of you turn to look at her.  She looks down and starts wringing her hands.  "It's just... does Skaia really seem that alive to you?  I've never thought that it had a will of its own.  All throughout the game, I've kept hearing the phrase, 'what Skaia already knows'."

            "Yeah," you say, "so have I.  But it's bullshit.  The game made us how we are, so you can't say it's doing nothing but predicting what we'll do.  And then there's the rules.  Have you noticed that they're completely insane?  Kissing corpses?  All of our guides having to die and stay dead?  My little sister didn't even think of _herself_ as a person, once it got into her head."

            "But you've heard all that before, right?" says Madoka.  "I mean, you were the one who brought up stories."

            That trips you up for a moment, but not Sayaka.  "What are you saying?" she asks.  "That it's humanity's fault for not always thinking through its fairy tales?"

            "Well, no," says Madoka.  "Our world was created by another game, and that game was created by another world.  I just don't think it's a good idea to try to make it someone's fault when everything's already so confusing."

            "I can't accept that!" Sayaka says.  "I can't accept that things have been bad forever, and that that means they always will be and there's no use figuring out why.  You think Skaia doesn't decide anything?  Then who decides where its portals go?  Why did it have to be the Earth getting hit with the Reckoning, and not just empty space?"

            "We can't do anything about that now," Akemi cuts in, as though trying to shut down her ranting, but Sayaka just rounds on her.

            "I don't care!  Even if there's no way to save the world, even if there's no way to destroy Skaia in its entirety and not just this one meaningless instance of it, I will never forgive it!  If all I can do is hate, then I won't ever stop hating it!"  Then she turns to you, and continues more softly,  "I know better now than to let my stubbornness put any of you in danger.  You all deserve to be happy, so I'll fight with you until this is over.  But when it is over, when there's no more fighting to be done, when the door to our new universe opens — I won't go through it."

            "Sayaka—" you begin, but she cuts you off.

            "I mean it!  I won't accept a reward for caving to the game, and if you drag me through against my will, I'll kill myself.  So don't even think about trying to force me to break my principles!"

            "What kind of principles are those?" you shout back at her.  "Your idea of right and wrong makes no sense!  How can something be right if it doesn't make _anyone_ happy?"

            " _We have no time for_ philosophy _!"_ Akemi bellows, and the authority in her voice makes both of you instantly go still.  "Sakura-san may be right that it's impossible to win against the Black King in this timeline.  Even so, it would be a waste not to face him.  If I can learn enough about the battle to ensure our success in the next go-around, all of the sacrifices will be worth it."

            "So you want us to die for your reconnaissance mission," you say.

            Sayaka smiles unpleasantly.  "What, do you have a problem with that?  We're going to die one way or another.  If Akemi turns back time now, it will just be sooner rather than later."

            "There is _some_ chance we'll make it through this time, you know," Akemi says.

            "No there isn't," Sayaka tells her.  "Because even if we win, I'm not going to let you leave Mami-san behind."  Akemi says nothing, but you can practically see the gears in that cold, clockwork mind of hers winding up.  You don't respond either.  If it comes down to that, of course, you'll be right there with Sayaka — but unlike her, you know better than to blurt it out in advance.

            "All right," you say after a beat, "let's get this over with.  What route should we take to Skaia?"

            "Flight would be the fastest, now that it's available to us," Akemi says.

            "And I suppose you'll carry Madoka, right?"

            To your annoyance, that doesn't trip her up in the slightest.  "Madoka will stay here," she says.  "As the only non-god tier among us, she would be a liability."

            "Hey!" says Sayaka.  "Who the Hell do you think you are, deciding that all on your own?  Madoka, you don't have to listen to her."

            "No, she's right," Madoka says.  She looks up at Sayaka and smiles disarmingly.  "I would only get in your way, especially since I know you all would try to protect me.  That's why I'll just go back to my planet and wait."

            "Huh?" you say.  Before you can prod any deeper, though, Homura turns on her heel and walks briskly up the stairs to the roof.   You and Sayaka have no choice but to hurry after her.  Madoka stays behind, smiling and waving sheepishly at you when you cast one last glance over your shoulder.

            No one talks as the three of you fly across the medium, and you find yourself getting lost in your own thoughts.  You have _two_ big Sayaka-related problems now, but it's no use overthinking them.  Even if you do miraculously come up with a solution in the time it takes you to reach the Battlefield, it won't do you any good once Akemi sets everything back.  The Akemi problem is the one that's relevant to you in this lifetime.  You can think of _one_ surefire way to force her to turn back time, but you're almost positive that you could never go through with it — and anyway, it would probably just end with Akemi making sure you wind up dead in every future timeline.  But maybe you're destined do it anyway; you can easily see Sayaka killing you for hurting Madoka, and it's getting harder and harder to imagine her doing so for anything short of that.  Do the clouds of Skaia show things that happen in doomed timelines, though?  Just off the top of your head, you can't think of a time they ever have.

            While you're thinking about Madoka, you have to wonder again just what was up with her back there.  You know she has some self-esteem issues to rival Sayaka's, but it's not like her to let them stop her from doing her best for the team.  Was she that shaken by Mami's death?  Or by Sayaka's crazy speech?  Or — it suddenly occurs to you to wonder — by killing the Black Queen?  You've all pretty much decided that carapacians are people, and Madoka has made it clear that she doesn't feel remotely okay with killing people, even evil ones.  Yet, when it came down to it, she delivered the finishing blow all on her own.  Depending on how much of a number Akemi did on the Queen beforehand, it might not even have felt like a fight.  Is the thing she's really afraid of being thrown into that situation a second time?

            In any case, you realize, you probably won't see her again before the reset.  You really should have said good bye.

            When you arrive at the Battlefield, the ground is riddled with craters and the sky streaked with flame.  The Black King awaits you, huge and looming enough to be part of the skyline.  He hurls a ball of lightning the size of one of the meteors at you the moment you touch down.  Before your mind can even process just what's coming toward you well enough to be afraid, Sayaka throws up a shield of void that catches it and devours it whole.

            You have a feeling this is going to be a hell of a battle.

            Akemi does her usual thing, vanishing and reappearing while sprays of gunfire pepper the enemy from seemingly out of nowhere.  Sayaka, sword drawn, flies straight for the Black King's face.  He swats her like an insect.  When the back of his hand connects with her and throws her backwards, you think that that's it, in a second she'll hit the ground a bloodied, crumpled mess of a corpse.  Instead, she tumbles only a few yards through the air before righting herself and charging back at him.  She slashes her sword more rapidly than you've ever seen before just to get in a meager few hits before being knocked back yet again — and again, and again, and again, each time recovering mid-fall and going right back to attacking.  The shield flashes in and out of existence so quickly that it's not until the third or fourth time that you manage to see her using it.

            As for you, you don't have shielding abilities, and you sure don't have time powers, but you still need a way to get close enough to attack without being pounded into oblivion.  Actually, you're not entirely sure what you _do_ have.  Before you went god tier, your mind powers weren't really good for anything besides dazing weaker enemies.  Back then, you never could have reached into the mind of an entity as powerful as the Black King.  You try doing so now, and are surprised at how easily you can access at least the first level, his immediate perceptions of the battle around him.  Thinking of heist stories about looped security camera footage, you grab the image of yourself right out of his head.  Now effectively invisible, you fly at him and drive your spear through his shell.  The pain must alert him to your presence, because he still takes a swing at you, but by this point you're a master at dodging attacks.  Once you're clear, you find another place to spear him and dodge again.

            It's a simple enough pattern, and you quickly get lost in it.  You don't think; you just fight, and time itself grows slippery like the shaft of the spear in your sweat-slicked hands.  The Black King's very body seems to absorb damage nearly as efficiently as Sayaka's shields.  Your upgraded spear is perfectly capable of piercing his carapace, but it's like trying to bleed out a human with a sewing pin.  Sayaka's and Akemi's weapons probably do even less, though they can at least get in multiple hits at once.  On the other hand, if any of you take even one direct hit from him, you'll be pretty much finished.

            The first sign the battle's almost over comes when the sound of gunfire stops and is replaced by the sound of explosions.  You hope that means you're close to winning and Akemi's trying to get in the last few hits as quickly as possible, but when the explosions stop too, you realize she's out of ammo.  Your spear is sunk to the midpoint of the shaft in the Black King's side when you stupidly pause to look around for her.  You find her hovering a little distance off, readying her bucklers to turn back time, at the same moment that you realize you've let yourself be distracted.  In the next moment, you also realize that the King isn't taking the opportunity to crush you like a gnat, and that his attention must be turned the same way yours is.  You try to shout a warning, but by the time the sound leaves your throat, it's too late.

            The stream of fire that hits Akemi lasts only for an instant before vanishing, so you can clearly see her charred body fall to the ground.  The lumps of warped, molten metal that once were bucklers fall with her.  You only know she's still alive when you hear her begin to wail in pain and despair.

            The next thing you know, you're struck by what feels like a speeding truck but is probably just a flick of the King's finger.  It sends you flying.  You try to control the fall, but your pain-wracked body is unresponsive.  You hear Sayaka scream your name, her voice somehow getting closer instead of further away, and feel her arms wrap around you just before you hit the ground.   You turn to look at her and see the Black King firing off a shot at the both of you.  Sayaka's back is turned, so she doesn't.

            The flame surrounds you and is gone in a second, but its heat lingers, worked deep into your flesh.   The tears that stream down your face feel cool against the burns.  You have nothing else to soothe you as you lie beside your friends and watch the Black King — staggering a bit now, but still far from falling — summon another meteor-sized explosive charge above you.

            "My fault," Akemi sobs.  "This is all my fault.  Madoka!  Madoka, I'm sorry!"

            "Come on," Sayaka whispers, shakily lifting one arm above her.  An apple-sized orb of shadow, thin and quivering as smoke from a candle, appears in the palm of her hand.  "I can't let everyone down now."  The massive, violently flickering sphere of ruby electricity is so close you can feel what's left of the hairs on your body stand on end.  It's so bright that your eyes burn even when you close them, and only looking directly into Sayaka's magic provides any kind of relief.  " _I won't lose!_ "  Her voice sounds so damn brave that, even now, you almost believe her.

            "I love you," you tell her.  The sound she makes in response is either a gasp or a choke.

            What happens next happens so quickly that you only barely see it and don't at all comprehend it.  An arrow of honey-colored light comes shooting out of nowhere and strikes the orb in Sayaka's hand.  The shadow explodes, enveloping all of you in a maelstrom of cool, almost liquid darkness.  When that clears, the lightning blast is gone, and hovering above you in its place is a figure dressed all in cream and honey yellow, with a hood like the world's longest windsock.

            "Heir of Hope!" the Black King rumbles.

            "Your Majesty, you don't have to fight anymore," says the figure, and from her voice you can tell that it's Madoka.  "I know what my friends' true feelings are, and none of us have any desire to create a new universe.  If you leave us be, we'll finish your job for you."

            "Are you crazy?" you shout at her.

            "Madoka, what are you doing?" Akemi gasps.

            The Black King takes aim.  Madoka outdraws him and fires a shining arrow into his head.  By all rights it shouldn't be much worse than a bee sting to him, but the impact drives him staggering backwards.  While he's off-balance, Madoka fires a second arrow, then a third, and the King topples like an ancient tree uprooted.  He takes a few last gasping breaths and then goes still.

            Madoka floats down to land beside you and slowly helps each of you to your feet.  She goes last to Akemi, who stands clinging to her and crying softly.  "I'm sorry," Madoka tells her, stroking her hair.  "I wish I could have gotten here soon enough to keep all of you from getting hurt."

            "No, you were awesome!" Sayaka protests.  "And we're fine, really!  Oh..."  You see her swaying just in time to catch her before she falls completely.  "Thanks, Kyouko." 

            "Hey," you say, looking around, "shouldn't the meteors be stopping?"

            Sayaka and Akemi follow your gaze and flinch when they realize that instead, they're falling thicker than ever.

            "Not really," says Madoka.  "That only happens when _both_ the Black King and the Black Queen are dead."  All eyes go to her, and she smiles sheepishly.  "Sorry.  I lied."

            You have no idea how to react.  If it were anyone but Madoka, you think you would be furious, but as it is you're just baffled.  "Why?" Akemi asks her, and you decide that sums up your own feelings well enough.

            "Because I probably would have been able to kill her," Madoka says, "but I wouldn't have been able to fight our way off of Derse in time to save you.  Not all on my own.  So..."  She takes a deep breath, and her soft smile flattens and hardens as her face assumes a look of pure determination you've never before seen on it.  "I made a deal with her.  I told her I wanted to help her destroy Skaia.  I said I wanted to destroy it before it ever existed, and I didn't know whether that was possible, but if it was, then surely the Heroes of Hope and Time were the ones who could do it."

            "What the Hell?" you blurt out.  Homura looks horrified, but Sayaka is grinning like a maniac.

            "Go on!" she encourages, and you have to quash the urge to drop her.

            "The Black Queen told me to ask Abraxas about it," Madoka continues.  "So after you all flew off, I went to see him.  When I got to his lair, he didn't fight me.  He just said something strange about chickens and eggs, and that to be born, I would have to destroy a world.  Then he asked me to choose which world I wanted to destroy.  I think it only made sense to me because I'd already made my decision, but I told him, and he told me what to do.  So now I know how to save everyone.  We're going to destroy Skaia and separate the timelines of the Incipisphere and the Earth."

            "But that's impossible!" Akemi objects.

            "Not anymore," Madoka tells her.  "I _am_ Hope, and I have the power of a God now.  All of you are also more powerful than you realize.  If we work together and give it everything we have, I know that all of our wishes will come true!"  She takes a step back and throws out her arms, and her body dissolves into honey-colored light.  You and Sayaka gasp.  Akemi cries out in horror, but Madoka's voice rings in your heads to reassure you:  "It's fine!  I'm still with you."

            The light surrounds Akemi and forms into two discs beneath her hands, reminiscent of her bucklers.  "Homura-chan," Madoka says, "if we do this, you and I will have to stay on this side to stabilize everything.  Even if we restore the Earth, we won't be able to go back there.  Is that all right?"

            "As long as we're together," Akemi answers.  "Madoka, no matter what, no matter where we're living, I promise I'll always protect you!"

            "Thank you, Homura-chan."  The discs begin to whirl around, spooling in glowing red threads from the ether.  "See?  When we combine our powers like this, you don't have to guess anymore.  We can collect everyone's timelines and spin them back out the way we want them to go."

            "Madoka, wait!" Sayaka tells her.  "It isn't fair for you to be trapped here while the rest of us go home.  I'll stay with you too."

            "That's fine, Sayaka-chan," Madoka assures her.  "You can choose whatever you want."

            "Can you save Momo?" you ask.

            "I think so," says Madoka.  "Her timeline is here.  She existed in this world for a while. I can still feel the mark left on it by her hopes and feelings."

            "Then I have to go back," you say.  "I can't leave her all on her own, and I'm not going to make her stay here, either."

            "You know, Kyouko-chan," says Madoka, "your father was born here too."

            "Can you make him be a better person?"

            "I don't think so."

            "Then screw him.  I don't want him to ever get another chance to hurt Momo. "

            "Kyouko," Sayaka says softly.

            "Don't worry, I'm not going to try to convince you not to throw your life away this time.  I know better now than to believe that I can just talk you out of doing whatever you think is the right thing."  You're not going to cry, you tell yourself.  This is the good ending.  Fate will be undone, and everyone will live.  "It won't be so bad here.  Madoka will take good care of you.  I'm just sorry that I have to go away."

            "That's not—" Sayaka begins, but is cut off when the threads suddenly catch, and the discs begin to make an ear-splitting whirring sound.  "What's going on?"

            "It's fine," Madoka says again, and the light spreads to surround you too.  "It's your turn now, Thief of Mind!  Do you know?  What's the worst enemy of hope?"

            "Despair?" you guess.

            "No," says Madoka, "that's just its opposite."

            "Then it's..?"

            "Certainty," Sayaka says with the authority of someone who knows from experience.  "If you _know_ that things won't be all right — or even if you just think you know — then there's no room for hope anymore."

            "'What Skaia already knows,'" you mutter to yourself, and suddenly everything clicks.  "No way!  You want me to steal _Skaia's_ mind?"

            "That's right," says Madoka.  "Even if it's destroyed physically in a couple of hours, its knowledge is eternal.  We need to do something special to blot that out."

            "No way," you repeat.  "There's just no way!"

            "Kyouko-chan, please trust me," she says.  And she's Madoka, so what else can you do?  With her light guiding you and lending you strength, you reach into the mind of the center of the universe and pull everything it knows into yourself.  Your head aches like it's about to explode.  Your vision wavers and your knees buckle, and Sayaka has to be the one to catch you this time.  It takes all the strength you have left not to repay her for it by throwing up on her.

            "Please tell me this will be over soon," you say.

            "It will.  I'm sorry."  The light spreads to Sayaka.  "Sayaka-chan, you're not going to like this.  But everything will be all right in the end, so please hear me out!  The void element can destroy energy and light.  In this game, light is also knowledge.  Even now, you don't have the physical strength to destroy a star.  But you do have the magical strength to destroy everything it knows."

            "So what do I have to do?" Sayaka asks.

            Madoka hesitates, so you answer for her.  "You have to kill me."  Sayaka recoils from you, dropping you to your knees.  And here you were thinking that Madoka's plan meant you would get to cheat fate completely.

            "I'm sorry, Sayaka-chan," Madoka tells her.  "But everything really is going to be all right.  She'll come back too, I promise."

            "But I don't _want_ to!" Sayaka cries.  "How could I possibly hurt Kyouko?"

            "It will probably hurt a lot less than the way my body feels right now," you tell her.  Sayaka just cries harder.  "Come on, Sayaka.  Stop being a baby and help me save my sister."

            "I know."  Sayaka wipes her tears away and grits her teeth.  "I _know_."  She draws her sword, and the aura of hope around her flares and blackens.  "Hey, Kyouko?" she says, not even looking at you.

            "What?"

            "If I can do this, then surely I can...  I have to be able to..."

            " _What_?" you repeat.  The pain is making you irritable, and you're sure that comes out in your voice.

            Sayaka glances up, and her eyes, looking so haunted and hollow, meet yours.  "I love you too," she says, and stabs you through the heart.

* * *

            You are Sakura Kyouko, and you've just woken up from a bad dream.

            It takes you longer than it should to recognize the bed you're in.  In the end, it turns out just to be the one in your room.  Or rather, you guess, it's your bed in the bedroom in Mami's apartment.  You can't really call something "your room" when you have to share it with both of your sisters.  Right now you're alone in it, which means that Mami and Momo woke up before you.  More importantly, judging by the wonderful smells wafting in through the open door, Mami is cooking pancakes.

            "What's the occasion?" you ask as you hurry into the living room and all but dive into your spot at the table.

            Mami has already set the plates down and is pouring everyone's tea.  It's just about the hardest thing ever to restrain yourself from tearing into your breakfast until she sits down to hers, but Momo is waiting patiently, and there's no way you're going to let your own little sister show you up.

            "It's just a silly thing, really," Mami says.  "I had a very unpleasant dream last night, and I wanted something sweet to chase it away."  Mercifully, she sits down, and you begin shoveling strips of pancake into your mouth. 

            "Momo had a nightmare too!" Momo chimes in.  "But even though it was a nightmare, it was also kind of a good dream, because I dreamed that Big Sis Mami's father was our father, so she was really our sister!"

            You nearly choke on your pancake.  Mami freezes stone-still with her teacup raised half-way to her mouth.

            "Momo, that's not something you should wish for!" you say, trying to cover for your reaction.  "It sounds really weird to grown-ups."

            "Actually," Mami says carefully, "I believe I may have dreamed the same thing.  Perhaps it's an omen."

            "What's all that about?" you ask, not ready to deal with the implications of this just yet.  "Are you trying to get me to start calling you Big Sister?"

            "Only if you would like to," Mami answers demurely, and takes a long sip of her tea.

            As usual, you're the first to finish your breakfast.  Since Mami and Momo sit chatting for a while about their freakishly similar dreams, you're also the first to get your school things together and head out the door.  A familiar face greets you when you step outside.

            "Sayaka?"  You start a little, and then feel inexpressibly stupid for being surprised to see her.  The two of you have been walking to school together almost every day since you transferred.  You knew that.  Of course you knew that.  How could you _not_ have known that?

            You expect her to laugh at you, or at least tell you you're being weird, but she doesn't.  "You told me I should do what I thought was right," she says instead.  "When I thought about it, it definitely wouldn't be right to steal a girl's first kiss and then run off on her.  If a boy did that, I would slap him."

            "You remember that too?" you blurt out, feeling your face redden.

            Sayaka looks suddenly terror-stricken.  "What?  It really wasn't a dream?"

            "What's that?  What's that?" Momo calls delightedly, racing out the door to join you.  "You two _kissed_?  Ew!"

            "That's not true!" you snap at her, though you're sure that the deepening flush of your face will betray you.  "You must have _really_ heard that wrong!  Stop snooping!  It gives you weird ideas!"

            "Come along, Momo-chan," Mami says, appearing just in time to take her hand and drag her ahead of you.  "Your sister is incorrigible, but I won't have you making a habit of tardiness as well."

            "Big Sis and Miki-san are in lo-ove," Momo sing-songs.  If Mami says anything in response, they're too far away by that time to hear.

            "Good job," you grumble at Sayaka.  "Now I'm going to have to run away from home."

            "That can't possibly be what you're worried about right now," Sayaka says, and you can't bring yourself to argue.  "It's all so strange," she continues.  "Ever since I was a little kid I've felt this weird loneliness even when I wasn't alone at all, like there was someone specific missing.  Now I know why.  It was always Madoka."

            "We don't _know_ anything," you say.  "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not about to argue it's more likely that we all magically had the same dream.  But on the other hand, it isn't any less likely, either."

            "What do you believe, though?"

            "Seriously?  You really have to ask?  Of course I believe it was real!  How could I not?  I'm just pointing out that believing something and knowing it aren't the same things."

            "That's Kyouko for you."  Sayaka giggles.  You're not sure what's so funny, but she doesn't seem like she means any harm by it, so you let it go.  "I believe it's real too.  To be honest, I still feel really caught up in it all.  When I first saw you just now, I was so happy.  We really did it!  We really beat fate!"

            "Oh," you say.  She still doesn't know about that _other_ dream you had.  "Hm."

            "Hm?" Sayaka asks.  "What's that 'hm'?"

            You're not sure what to tell her.  Really, you're not even sure what to think.  Skaia knew all along that you were going to destroy its knowledge.  As always in matters concerning Skaia, you're left wondering exactly what that means.  Was it planning its own defeat, or just predicting it?  And either way, couldn't that mean that it wasn't really a defeat at all?  Can you be fated to overcome fate?  Can you ever _not_ be fated for anything?

           Still, none of that matters much as long as you get to be alive and here with Sayaka and your family.  You have a feeling that Sayaka might find all of this a lot more troubling than you do, though.  Fortunately, you know exactly how to misdirect her.

            "I was just thinking over what you said about first kisses," you tell her.  "On the one hand, if it's real, we really did lose ours in a pretty unpleasant way.  On the other hand, maybe it doesn't count because of time travel."  You scratch your head nervously and look away.  "One way or the other, though, I think I'd like to try again sometime."

            "How about now?" asks Sayaka.  Before you have a chance to respond, she's wrapped her arms around your neck and pulled you in.

            It's hardly a storybook kiss.  Your teeth accidently get her lip a little as you connect, and there's a weird wet smacking sound when you separate.  Still, Sayaka's skin is warm, and her eyelashes tickle pleasantly as they flutter against your face.

            "That was nice," Sayaka says, resting her forehead against yours.  "But I still think we can do better, with practice."

            In the end, you don't make it to school until half-way through homeroom, but neither of you minds that too much.  There are worse places you could be stuck than in detention.


End file.
